Preschool Fun

 Before I get to the preschool fun, I thought I would show you that I found a good substitute for spaghetti sauce for our allergic-to-nearly-everything one-year-old.  (Wow.  That's a lot of dashes.)  Anyway, most spaghetti sauces have something in them that the child cannot have, and I don't always have time to make some from scratch (shocked, aren't you?).  So today, while everyone else was having pasta he couldn't have, I made some of his rice noodles, and added a spoon of pumpkin puree.  He was in heaven.  Ate three helpings!  Yeah for simple solutions.  Maybe I'll try sweet potatoes too...

As of the first of April, I'm trying out a new preschool curriculum for the daycare.  So far I LOVE it.  It's called Star Brite and it is really good.  They have so many activities - 4-5 projects a day so far.  In fact, I'm debating over making it stretch so that we do one day's materials over two days.  It's kind of pricey - more than other curricula I've tried, but well worth it, given the amount of projects.  If I stretched it to make one month last two months, it would be very cost effective.  Of course then there is the problem of holidays not matching up, so I'm not sure that would actually work.  And having so many take-home papers makes me look really good, so I'll probably just use it as is for now... We'll see.

  

Anyway, we're getting a lot of cutting practice, which all the kids desperately need.  None of them are good at it.  My four year old cuts tiny pieces and tells me he broke his paper.  I tried explaining to him that cutting is different than breaking, but he's pretty sure the paper is broken *wink*

 I've had a few ideas pinned on Pinterest for art display areas for kids' work.  One had a beautiful flowery script saying "Masterpieces" and a place to hang art work.  Others use Picasso's quote "Every child is an artist."  Well, after trying vinyl on the wall I can say I'm not eager to try applying that again.  And I already have a huge bulletin board in the entryway, and no other convenient place to put take-home papers, so I sketched out big letters and let the kids go to work coloring and glittering them, then cut them out and stapled them up.  I wish now that I had outlined them by putting a bright or dark colored cardstock behind them because they don't show up so well on the fabric covered board.  But it serves the purpose and will be fine until I feel the need to do something about it.  I wrote each child's name on a clothespin and had them color the clothespin, and strung a piece of rope so we could hang everything without using a thumbtack every time.  (This is yesterday's collection of papers).

And here is today's work.  Fun!  I'm having a blast with this. And doing a formal curriculum is making our day go much faster.  It takes an hour to get through the projects alone - not counting calendar time and songs, books, etc.